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Portions of the document also exhort regional commanders to bolster their local defenses by stepping up training for fire brigades and organizing local war veteran associations.

 

According to the document, the junta has also issued small arms and provided platoon-level training for members of its pseudo-political organization the Union Solidarity and Development Association.

 

Most analysts and Burma watchers believe that a direct US invasion of Burma is unlikely, but the country’s top generals betray in the document their lingering paranoia and an obsession with security—an issue that has traditionally been used to justify the strengthening of Burma’s armed forces.

 

No available official data exists on the junta’s defense spending, but western defense analysts and independent reports indicate that levels have now reached as much as US $1 billion. The sale of oil and gas to energy-hungry neighbors has produced large cash reserves that could potentially fund further expansion of the country’s armed forces.

 

In the years following independence in 1948, the Burmese military was poorly funded, ill-trained and faced significant armed opposition from ethnic and political insurgents. Perhaps its greatest challenges came from the CIA-backed Kuomintang forces in northern Burma and the China-backed Communist Party of Burma.

 

To combat growing instability, the military began to expand in the 1950s and particularly following Gen Ne Win’s military coup in 1962. Burma has purchased weapons from a variety of sources, including India, Pakistan, Israel, France, Italy, Poland, Germany and Yugoslavia. It also received smaller-scale pre-sanctions assistance from the US and UK, though successive government leaders would spurn any further assistance from these sources.

 

Having acquired equipment to outfit the country’s fledgling air force and navy, Burma’s war machines fell into disrepair in the years leading up to 1988. Warships were incapable of maintaining effective coastal security, and many of the country’s jet fighters could no longer fly.